


five times alex danvers was a useless lesbian

by Inisheer



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Internalised Homophobia, kind of, oblivious baby gay alex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 23:25:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11023785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inisheer/pseuds/Inisheer
Summary: An experience universal to the people who figure themselves out late: looking back on your life and going, 'Oh. I was really gay, wasn't I?'There must be more to it than Vicky Donahue.





	five times alex danvers was a useless lesbian

(and one time it worked out anyway)

  1. **Annabel**



There is a story Alex tells. It’s the story of how she first broke her arm, when she was five years old and wore butterfly clips in her hair. It’s not a long story, nor a particularly interesting one, but it makes an amusing anecdote because it is so unsurprising, so effortlessly Alex Danvers, to anyone who’s known her for more than ten minutes.

This is the story: when she was five years old and wore butterfly clips in her hair, Alex took a head-first leap off the school jungle gym and broke her arm.

That’s it. That’s the story. Oh, there are other details: the height of the jungle gym, the greenstick fractures, the weeks in a cast. They’re secondary. Nowhere, retelling the story, does Alex ever discuss _why_ she decided to fling herself six feet into a pile of shredded bark that day. (Shredded bark, it turns out, is not a good cushioning material.) For twenty years she’s never thought there was any particular reason, beyond overconfidence and general Alex-ness.

But the important things often come back to us in the end.

In kindergarten, Alex’s best friend was a girl named Annabel. Alex doesn’t remember her last name; she moved away before the start of first grade. What she does remember are delicate dark curls held back by Alice bands, wide grey eyes, and a selection of psychedelic dresses. She remembers definitely, defiantly _not_ crying on the day Annabel left. And she remembers that Annabel was with her the day she jumped off the jungle gym. Annabel, and nobody else.

It occurs to Alex, at six o’clock on a Wednesday morning, that showing off for Annabel is probably the reason she thought that particular act of excitable recklessness was a good idea in the first place.

This is the story she only tells to the people who will really appreciate it: when she was five years old and wore butterfly clips in her hair, Alex took a head-first leap off the school jungle gym and broke her arm. To impress a girl.

 

  1. **Julia Stiles**



It’s the kind of thing that would become a vivid memory anyway. At ten or so, slumber parties are new enough to be magical, and in years to come Alex will still be able to pick out various moments of the night. The taste of frosting. An attack on the host’s teasing older brother. The girl who won’t let anyone else go to sleep and starts jumping on people who try until they finally pin her to the floor. But that’s later.

For Alex, the best part of the night involves sitting in a snuggle of sleeping bags, in the dark, popcorn in hand, caught up in the others’ excitement of watching a grown-up, _teenage_ film. She can hardly take her eyes off the leading lady, Kat Stratford – smart, vivacious and ballsy – and by the end Alex is almost holding her breath to see if Patrick will succeed in winning her over.

The lights go back on and the girls begin to chatter. There’s an argument starting: the guy who played Patrick, or the guy who played Cameron? Most are in agreement that Heath Ledger is the best-looking, though there’s one hold-out for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Alex is lost. She hadn’t noticed either, doesn’t really know or care what they’re talking about, but realises the others won’t accept this as an answer so picks Gordon-Levitt almost at random.

Alex wonders when all her friends got interested in boys. Is it a sudden thing, or did she just fail to notice it happening? Surely she can’t be the only one who hasn’t got there yet? The only one who’d rather wait a bit longer before worrying about dates and boyfriends and – ugh – kissing? But from the way they’re talking, it seems like she’s alone.

She’s in the middle of the circle. It doesn’t feel like it.

Years, years later, she’ll stumble across the film on Netflix. (Netflix usually knows better than to offer her romantic comedies.) She won’t watch it. Julia Stiles was in her teens and looks like a little girl to Alex now. Something about the memory might be spoiled. She remembers, briefly, her awe at this glamorous older girl, and the unshared confusion of being ten years old.

 

  1. **Miss Torres**



This one would have been Eliza’s story. She never told it.

Other mothers and daughters have shopping days or TV marathons. Eliza and Alex had miniature volcanoes in the garage, experimental catapults and ant colonies. Eliza was often busier than Jeremiah and while she did her best to make time for her daughter, it was a more difficult thing to find one-on-one space where the two of them could really talk; and Eliza, at least, talked best when her hands were busy. By the time Alex started junior high Eliza was beginning to worry if she’d soon outgrow their projects – if setting up a weather station in the yard would seem childish or embarrassing against the allure of beach parties – but her fears were temporarily assuaged when Alex presented her with the design for a sugar-fuelled rocket and insisted they buy potassium nitrate from the gardening store.

Working on the rocket, Eliza asked Alex how she was getting along with all of her teachers. She was treated to a barrage of information about one Miss Torres, who taught math. Eliza listened patiently to a rambling story involving the teacher’s greyhound and the school mascot, recalling that she’d heard the name many times already over the last few weeks. “Miss Torres this” and “Miss Torres that”. Alex was twelve, too young to appreciate being called _cute,_ but Eliza privately found it adorable.

She didn’t want to embarrass her daughter, but couldn’t help prying a little. ‘And what’s Miss Torres like? Is she young? Pretty?’

‘Yeah. She’s _so_ pretty, and she’s really nice too. She doesn’t mind if I help people in class even though it means I’m talking. Miss Torres says if you can explain something it shows you really understand it, and it’s better than letting me sit there twiddling my thumbs or doing things they’ll try to teach me again next year.’

‘Sounds like a smart lady,’ said Eliza. ‘Here, let me hold that.’

‘Yeah, she’s super smart. She told us she was a mathlete when she was in high school, and…’

Eliza finally managed to bring the conversation back to the rocket for a couple of tricky steps. Then when Alex was busy painting bits of the outer shell, she asked, ‘How are all your friends doing? Do they like junior high too?’

‘I guess,’ said Alex, with a shrug. ‘Molly won’t stop talking about this boy she’s going out with. It’s like she can’t talk about _anything_ else.’

Eliza raised her eyebrows. ‘I can see how that would be… Significant. Are there no boys you like?’

‘No,’ said Alex, quite casually, and with more apparent interest in her painting than the question. Eliza couldn’t help a smile. Now Alex did glance at her, noticing – ‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s not nothing. You’re not going to give me that lecture again, are you?’

‘Which lecture?’ said Eliza. She did give lectures, she had to admit, but she couldn’t think what Alex was talking about: she’d never lectured her daughter on boys or relationships. Alex was a sensible kid.

‘The smug one,’ said Alex, ‘About how one day my hormones will kick in and I’ll be swooning over boy bands with everybody else.’

That wasn’t a lecture. That was a joke. It hadn’t occurred to Eliza her daughter might think she meant it seriously. ‘No, sweetheart. I was just asking. Why, do you think that’s not likely to happen?’

Alex said, quietly, ‘I’m starting to wonder.’

Eliza would later regret not asking for clarification on this statement. By the time she realised Alex had meant something entirely different than she’d initially assumed, it was too late to do anything about it: they had Kara, and bigger worries, and there were no more garage science projects. Alex had a boyfriend. Eliza almost wondered if she’d guessed wrong.

In the moment all she said was, ‘Well, boys aren’t everything. Is that piece dry?’

Eliza knew full well what she was hearing, over a decade later, when every other sentence out of her daughter’s mouth suddenly contained the words, ‘Maggie,’ or ‘Maggie Sawyer.’

 

  1. **Vicky Donahue**



Alex Danvers meets Vicky Donahue in the first period of her first day of freshman year. They click immediately. Within a month it’s fair to call them best friends, bonding over astronomy, the frustrations of dial-up and lunchtime poker games. She hates horror movies, but otherwise she’s everything Alex could ask for in a best friend at fourteen, and her house is an escape from the eggshells Alex finds herself walking on at home. Vicky never seems to mind that Alex rarely invites her over in turn. She prefers to have access to her extensive make-up and nail polish collections, which she uses to practise her skills on Alex.

Vicky is boy-crazy, joyfully, enthusiastically and often successfully. Alex is still dragging her feet but decides during the year it might be a good idea to start dating; with Vicky on her side it’s not particularly difficult. With a little sister who was born on another planet, the relief of doing something so normal as going for ice-cream with a spiky-haired boy from her English class is almost enough to counterbalance the discovery that’s it’s not all that exciting. She confesses this to Vicky, once (minus the mention of other planets), and gets laughed at. Alex doesn’t bring it up again.

By the Thanksgiving of senior year she has a nice, steady boyfriend. He doesn’t like horror movies either, but he’s sweet, and though he’d clearly like to take things further than kissing he always stays put when Alex returns his wandering hands to somewhere she finds them more comfortable. Vicky, unlike her, has been keen to enter the world of sex and when she loses her virginity it’s all Alex hears about for a week.

Later, at one of their sleepovers, she teases Alex: ‘It would be so boring to wait until you’re legal.’

‘God, Vick, you’re putting more pressure on me than Tom is,’ says Alex, watching her wipe off her eyeshadow in the dressing-table mirror.

Vicky turns to her. Seriously, she says, ‘He’s not putting pressure on you, is he?’

‘No. He’s the perfect gentleman.’

‘That’s good. Hang on, just let me change.’

Alex throws herself back onto the bed. She watches Vicky pull her shirt off, back to Alex, sees shoulder blades and the nubs of her spine. The bra is next. Alex looks away.

She’s so determinedly not looking that she doesn’t realise Vicky’s in her pyjamas until her friend pounces on her. ‘But don’t you _want_ to?’

‘Don’t I want to what?’

‘Have sex.’

Alex fends Vicky off and sits up. ‘I thought you said it wasn’t even that good.’

‘It was and it wasn’t. It was more like – I was so turned on, I couldn’t wait to do it, and then when we were actually doing it, it was all a bit clumsy and awkward. And it did feel good, like, I’m not saying it was _bad_ , it just wasn’t earth-shattering. Does that make sense?’

Alex pretends to think. ‘No.’

She offers to set up the movie while Vicky goes to fetch supplies from the kitchen. No, thinks Alex, it really _doesn’t_ make sense to her. Sometimes she finds kissing boring enough – with any guy, not just with Tom – and she’s not in a hurry to take things much further. She could have been at Tom’s tonight. Alex would much rather be here with Vicky.

They snuggle together to watch the film on Vicky’s laptop. Afterwards, to sleep, they lie separately in the king-sized bed. Vicky drifts off easily. Alex feels a sudden chill at the loss of touch. She listening to her friend’s slow breathing, intent on her peaceful, pretty face, and considers how easy it would be to reach out –

Alex stops, frightened by her own thoughts.

You don’t cuddle your friends in bed like that. Or do you? Is that normal? She can’t tell, doesn’t know, oh god, she’s staring, what if Vicky wakes up –

She rolls away, to the edge of the bed. She’s scared to go any further in case the movement disturbs Vicky but this is as far from her as Alex can get, and instead of her friend’s face she can see the light coming in between the curtains, and she forces herself to remain calm.

No. She doesn’t think of Vicky like that. She does _not._ She’s not into girls. She likes boys; she likes _Tom._ Alex pictures him, trying to make herself sure. She’s attracted to Tom. To other men, too, if she could think of them. She must be.

Alex doesn’t sleep much that night.

Maybe she forgets the details, the particular night, the film they watched, everything but the particular horror in that moment too close to understanding. She tells Maggie about it, when they haven’t been dating very long, and what she remembers of the subsequent argument and falling-out. Maggie listens with her hand on Alex’s knee.

‘Heteronormativity’s a bitch, huh?’ she says at the end.

Alex kisses her.

  1. **Marcie**



In sophomore year, Alex’s biochem lab partner was a girl named Toni Fischer. That was after Toni’s original lab partner asked Alex to switch because he was a little bit scared of her. Lots of people were. Alex found her perfectly amicable, if prone to raising her voice and swearing creatively when she got started on certain topics.

There were plenty of these – Republicans, anti-semitism and climate change – but feminism and lesbianism provided a steady bass line to the symphony of her opinions. Toni was gay. Very obviously, outspokenly gay. This was what scared Alex, not that Toni was brash and argumentative, but the idea of being so visible in a world where men who loved men and women who loved women were not welcome. The thought of taking something so dangerous about yourself and letting it be seen instead of keeping it safely hidden – there was something terrifying and thrilling in the idea. Mostly terrifying. But she was never sure if she was scared _for_ Toni, who seemed to get along just fine.

Toni had a buzz cut and a wardrobe full of badge-laden denim and more piercings than the average ageing punk rocker. She liked girls as butch as herself, which might have left her unlucky in love because they could be thin on the ground; but Toni had a talent for finding queer kids, and Alex wasn’t sure if Toni knew how she did it any more than _she_ could explain why all her best friends were computer nerds.

Other than Toni, who could be counted a friend after the incident with the motorbike. Toni owned an elderly Kawasaki, and one day Alex found her swearing at it outside the labs. She offered Toni a loan of the repair kit she carried in her trunk, then, after watching Toni argue with the bike for a while, rolled up her sleeves and took over. She’d been fixing her own car since she was sixteen. The specifics of bike engines might be different, but mechanics had always been an experimental process for Alex, and she had the problem resolved in under ten minutes.

Alex was never sure if Toni loved her or hated her for it. She was sworn to secrecy – Toni had a reputation to uphold, and getting rescued at the roadside by a straight girl who wore slinky dresses to nightclubs would do it no good – but from then on Alex found herself included at the edge of Toni’s circle, invited to hangouts and the occasional party, and Toni referred to her as a friend. Or more precisely, she called Alex her ‘token straight friend’.

Alex found her life oddly fascinating. The rules of hooking up with boys were clear enough: but how did two girls ever figure out the other one was gay at the same time? Yet Toni seemed to manage it, would bounce into the lab with another story about a number obtained in a bar or a make-out session at someone’s get-together. Then there were the knotted relationship histories within her own group. How could you date someone who was a friend’s ex, an ex’s ex and an ex’s best friend all at the same time?

She liked most of Toni’s friends, though, even if she despaired at their love lives, and she particularly liked Marcie, who laughed easily and had a habit of stealing people’s hats. At one particular party they got tipsy on peach schnapps together and sat giggling in the kitchen over something totally unfunny. Marcie could be touchy-feely and now her hands strayed across Alex’s arm and the hem of her dress. The mood shifted almost imperceptibly. ‘You know you’re really pretty, Alex, it’s such a shame you’re straight.’

Alex felt herself go warm, then cold, palms clammy with something that wasn’t exactly discomfort. She practically wrenched herself away from Marcie. After making some excuse, ignoring Marcie’s hurt and surprise, she tracked down Toni to say goodbye (and learned she had, predictably, found someone to make out with). From there Alex stumbled outside, shaky on her feet, and made the executive decision to walk home in the hope of clearing her head. By the time she returned to her dorm she’d almost succeeded in forgetting about the most worrying part: that it was sense, not instinct, which had compelled her to draw away.

Alex was more careful after that. She didn’t go to any more of Toni’s parties.

But Toni and Alex kept in touch over the years, in the laid-back way that meant liking each other’s social media posts and catching up properly a few times a year. Alex thought it was probably the spate of lovey-dovey Maggie pictures on her Instagram that made Toni do a double-take and call her up out of the blue with a barrage of sidelong questions.

Alex took a deep breath. ‘If you’re still namedropping me as your token straight friend, you’ll have to stop.’

‘So you and this Maggie.’

‘Yeah.’

Toni hummed. ‘Why did you never tell me?’

‘Because I didn’t know.’ From there it spilled out in a stream of words, set loose by the opportunity to talk about this to someone who’d understand and who also – much as she adored Maggie – wasn’t her girlfriend. Words like: ‘This is all very new,’ and ‘No wonder I thought men were more trouble than they’re worth,’ and ‘I can’t _believe_ I never realised. How do you not know something like that about yourself? Because I’m looking back at my life now and it’s so _obvious_. I'm an idiot, aren't I?’

Toni let her babble. When Alex ran out of steam, she said, ‘Huh. Looks like I’m going to need a new token straight friend.’

 

**Plus One**

Maggie Sawyer. Obviously. What were you expecting?

**Author's Note:**

> So… This is not the angst-filled hurt/comfort I said I'd write about Maggie's family, but I'm still working on that, don't worry. And if anyone's wondering, the film is "10 Things I Hate About You".
> 
> The comment box is ticklish. Make it laugh by leaving a comment.


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